lows. May the gloomy east, turning up the sea, disperse its cables and broken oars. Let the north arise as mighty, as when he rives the quivering oaks on the lofty mountains; nor let a friendly star appear through the murky night, in which the baleful Orion sets: nor let him be conveyed in a calmer sea, than was the Grecian band of conquerors, when Pallas turned her rage from burned Troy to the ship of impious Ajax. O what a sweat is coming upon your sailors, and what a sallow paleness upon you, and that effeminate wailing, and those prayers to unregarding Jupiter; when the Ionian bay, roaring with the tempestuous south-west, shall break your keel! But if, extended along the winding shore, you shall delight the cormorants as a dainty prey, a las civious he-goat and an ewe-lamb shall be sacrificed to the Tempests.

ODE XI.

TO PECTIUS.

As

It by no means, O Pectius, delights me as heretofore to write Lyric verses, being smitten with cruel love with love, who takes pleasure to inflame me beyond others, either youths or maidens. This is the third December that has shaken the [leafy] honours from the woods, since I ceased to be mad for Inachia. Ah me! (for I am ashamed of so great a misfortune,) what a subject of talk was I throughout the city! I repent, too, of the entertainments, at which both a languishing and silence and sighs, heaved from the bottom of my breast, discovered the lover. soon as the indelicate god [Bacchus] by the glowing wine had removed, as I grew warm, the secrets of [my heart] from their repository, I made my complaints, lamenting to you, “Has the fairest genius of a poor man no weigh against wealthy lucre? Wherefore, if a generous indignation boil in my breast, insomuch as to disperse to the winds these disagreeable applications, that give no ease to the desperate wound; the shame [of being overcome] ending, shall cease to contest with rivals of such a sort. When with great gravity, had applauded these resolu

tions in your presence, being ordered to go home, I was carried with a wandering foot to posts, alas! to me not friendly, and alas! obdurate gates, against which I bruised my loins and side. Now my affections for the delicate Lyciscus engross all my time: from them neither the unreserved admonitions, nor the serious reprehensions of other friends, can recall me [to my former taste for poetry]; but, perhaps, either a new flame for some fair damsel, or for some graceful youth who binds his long hair in a knot, [may do so].

ODE XII.

TO A WOMAN WHOSE CHARMS WERE OVER.

What would you be at, you woman fitter for the swarthy monsters? Why do you send tokens, why billet-doux to me, and not to some vigorous youth, and of a taste not nice? For I am one who discerns a polypus or fetid ramminess, however concealed, more quickly than the keenest dog the covert of the boar. What sweatiness, and how rank an odour every where rises from her withered limbs! when she strives to lay her furious rage with impossibilities; now she has no longer the advantage of moist cosmetics, and her colour appears as if stained with crocodile's ordure; and now, in wild impetuosity, she tears her bed, bedding, and all she has. She attacks even my loathings in the most angry terms:-" You are always less dull with Inachia than me: in her company you are threefold complaisance; but you are ever unprepared to oblige me in a single instance. Lesbia, who first recommended you-so unfit a help in time of need-may she come to an ill end! when Coan Amyntas paid me his addresses; who is ever as constant in his fair one's service, as the young tree to the hill it grows on. For whom were laboured the fleeces of the richest Tyrian dye? For you? Even so that there was not one in company, among gentlemen of your own rank, whom his own wife admired preferably to you; oh, unhappy me, whom you fly, as the lamb dreads the fierce wolves, or the she-goats the lions!"

ODE XIII.

TO A FRIEND.

An horrible tempest has condensed the sky, and show ers and snows bring down the atmosphere: now the sea now the woods bellow with the Thracian north wind Let us, my friends, take occasion from the day; and, while our knees are vigorous, and it becomes us, let old age with his contracted forehead become smooth. Do you produce the wine, that was pressed in the consulship of my Torquatus. Forbear to talk of any other matters. The deity, perhaps, will reduce these [present evils] to your former [happy] state by a propitious change. Now it is fitting both to be bedewed with Persian perfume, and to relieve our breasts of dire vexations by the lyre, sacred to Mercury. Like as the noble Centaur, [Chiron,] sung to his mighty pupil: "Invincible mortal, son of the god dess Thetis, the land of Assaracus awaits you, which the cold currents of little Scamander and swift-gliding Simoïs divide: whence the fatal sisters have broken off your return by a thread that cannot be altered: nor shall your azure mother convey you back to your home. There [then] by wine and music, sweet consolations, drive away every symptom of hideous melancholy."

ODE XIV.

TO MÆCENAS.

You kill me, my courteous Mæcenas, by frequently inquiring, why a soothing indolence has diffused as great a degree of forgetfulness on my inmost senses, as if I had imbibed with a thirsty throat the cups that bring on Le thean slumbers. For the god, the god prohibits me from bringing to a conclusion the verses I promised [you, namely those] iambics which I had begun. In the same manner they report that Anacreon of Teios burned for the Samian Bathyllus; who often lamented his love to an inaccurate measure on a hollow lyre. You are viodently in love yourself; but if a fairer flame did not burn

besieged Troy, rejoice in your lot.

Phryne, a freed woman, and not content with a single admirer, con

sumes me.

ODE XV.

TO NEÆRA.

It was night, and the moon shone in a serene sky among the lesser stars; when you, about to violate the divinity of the great gods, swore [to be true] to my requests, embracing me with your pliant arms more closely than the lofty oak is clasped by the ivy; that while the wolf should remain an enemy to the flock, and Orion, unpropitious to the sailors, should trouble the wintry sea, and while the air should fan the unshorn locks of Apollo, [so long you vowed] that this love should be mutual. O Neæra, who shall one day greatly grieve on account of my merit: for, if there is any thing of manhood in Horace, he will not endure that you should dedicate your nights continually to another, whom you prefer; and exasperated, he wil look out for one who will return his love:`and, though an unfeigned sorrow should take possession of you, yet my firmness shall not give way to that beauty which has once given me disgust. But as for you, whoever you be who are more successful [than me], and now strut proud of my misfortune; though you be rich in flocks and abundance of land, and Pactolus flow for you, nor the mysteries of Pythagoras, born again, escape you, and you excel Nireus in beauty; alas! you shall [hereafter] bewail her love transferred elsewhere; but I shall laugh in my turn.

ODE XVI.

TO THE ROMAN PEOPLE.

Now is another age worn away by civil wars, and Rome Lerself falls by her own strength. Whom neither the bordering Marsi could destroy, nor the Etrurian band of the menacing Porsena, nor the rival valour of Capua, nor the boid Spartacus, and the Gauls perfidious with their

innovations: nor did the fierce Germany subdue with its blue-eyed youth, nor Annibal, detested by parents; but we, an impious race, whose blood is devoted to perdition, shall destroy her: and this land shall again be possessed by wild beasts. The victorious barbarian, alas! shall trample upon the ashes of the city, and the horseman shall smite it with the sounding hoofs; and (horrible to see!) he shall insultingly disperse the bones of Romulus, which [as yet] are free from the injuries of wind and sun. Perhaps you all in general, or the better part of you, are inquisitive to know, what may be expedient, in order to escape [such] dreadful evils. There can be no determination better than this; namely, to go wherever our feet will carry us, wherever the south or boisterous south-west shall summon us through the waves; in the same manner as the state of the Phocæans fled, after having uttered execrations [against such as should return], and left their fields and proper dwellings and temples to be inhabited by boars and ravenous wolves. Is this agreeable? has any one a better scheme to advise? Why do we delay to go on shipboard under an auspicious omen? But first let us swear to these conditions-the stones shall swim upward, lifted from the bottom of the sea, as soon as it shall not be impious to return; nor let it grieve us to direct our sails homeward, when the Po shall wash the tops of the Matinian summits; or the lofty Apennine shall remove into the sea, or a miraculous appetite shall unite monsters by a strange kind of lust; insomuch that tigers may delight to couple with hinds, and the dove be polluted with the kite; nor the simple herds may dread the brindled lions, and the he-goat, grown smooth, may love the briny main. After having sworn to these things, and whatever else may cut off the pleasing hope of returning, let us go, the whole city of us, or at least that part which is superior to the illiterate mob: let the idle and despairing part remain upon these inauspicious habitations. Ye, that have bravery, away with effeminate grief, and fly beyond the Tuscan shore. The ocean encircling the land awaits us; let us seek the happy plains, and prospering islands, where the untilled land yearly produces corn, and the unpruned vineyard punctually flourishes; and where the branch of the never-failing olive blossoms